The present invention relates to a device for reading information out of a magnetic and/or IC card as external memory and writing new information in the card.
Various devices having a magnetic head for reading data stored in the magnetic stripe which is formed on a plastic substrate as identification card or credit card have been widely used. For instance U.S. Pat. No. 4,322,613 discloses, although the invention is directed not to the reader itself but to a method for inhibiting tampering with data on the magnetic stripe, that there is provided a pair of rollers between which the card is frictionally fed by driving one of them with a motor to be energized in response to a signal from the first or START sensor as to feed the card to be in the reading/writing position and driven in the opposite direction in response to a signal from the second or END sensor so as to eject the card out of the device.
Meanwhile, the so-called IC card or integrated circuit card having a semi-conductor memory embedded in the plastic substrate is going to be widely used instead of said conventional magnetic card mainly because of far more memory capacity. Such a card has a plurality of electric contact points exposed to be flush with the surface thereof to be connected with the computer for reading/writing.
Various devices having a head planted with the contact pins of the number and arrangement corresponding to those of said card contact points so as to electrically connect the card inserted therein to the computer. For instance, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 747,148 filed on June 20, 1985 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,310 by the same applicants as in this application, discloses such a device having the contact pin head normally held in the waiting position by spring means and pushed by the card manually inserted in the device casing against the force of said spring towards the reading/writing position. The head is adapted to vertically move up sliding along a sloped floor for attaining correct engagement.
In order to cope with the situation where magnetic cards and IC cards must be read/written, the two different devices therefor are to be equipped in every shop or office. This is unsatisfactory in view of the cost of such two devices but also of possible confusion caused by customer's erroneous insertion of the magnetic card in the IC card reader/writer or vice versa. In case where one card having the magnetic stripe for a sort of data and the IC memory for the other sort of data is used, the operation must be made two times or by means of two different devices.